e cold charity of strangers; but
she could not bear the thought of being separated from her mother. So
she endured her wretched state of dependence as best she could, while
she quietly sought for some means of employment that would yield them
a living.

Profiting by the lessons she had learned from her uncles, she did not
apply to any person who had known her father and received favors from
him in their better days. She asked no favor from any one--only work, at
a fair price. By diligent hunting, she found several opportunities. She
could earn four dollars a week by embroidering (at which she was
skilful, and had taken premiums); or two dollars and a half for
teaching French, twice a week, in a country seminary; or her board and
washing for inducting a family of four little musical prodigies into all
the mysteries of the piano. But these tempting offers would still have
left her mother with her uncles, and she spurned them all.

CHAPTER V.

A FRIEND IN NEED.

One day, as Miss Pillbody was riding up Broadway, in tending to visit a
Teachers' Agency for the sixteenth time, she accidentally made the
acquaintance of a middle-aged lady, who talked a great deal upon the
slightest provocation, trifled sadly with grammar and pronunciation, and
was excessively friendly and amiable. The diamonds in her ears and on
her fingers, and her overdone and gaudy style of dressing, were some
indication, though not a convincing one, that she was a woman of wealth;
and Miss Pillbody made bold to ask her if she knew anybody who wanted a
private teacher in her family.

The lady said she did not, "unless," she added, laughing very loud at
the humor of the suggestion, "you come into my family, and learn me
something."

The remark was unpremeditated, but, the moment it was made, the lady
seemed to be greatly struck with its force, and immediately followed it
up with the question, "Do you s'pose you could learn grammar and
pronunciation, and how to talk French, to a grown-up woman like me?"
Miss Pillbody thought the lady with the diamonds was joking, and laughed
by way of reply. "But I am ra-ally in earnest," continued the lady,
thoughtfully, turning three heavy cluster rings on her little left
finger. "Ye see, my early eddication was rather poor, 'cos I was poor
then; but my old man made a spec' in tobacco, last year, and now I'm
pooty well off, and live in good s'ciety. I kinder feel the want of
grammar, French, and a few o' them thin